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Mobile sexual health clinic a life-saver for immigrant women

Whether they speak Urdu or Korean, the name on the Winnebago means the same to all of its farflung patients: a service that could literally save their lives.

The interior of the mobile clinic operated by the Immigrant Women's Health Centre. The 9-metre Winnebago is separated into three compartments: an examination room, a waiting room, and an intake area. (MARC ELLISON / TORONTO STAR)

Whether they speak Urdu or Korean, for immigrant women in Toronto the name on the pink and white Winnebago means the same in all languages — a place of hope, and a service that can quite literally save their lives.

The Immigrant Women’s Health Centre has run its mobile sexual health clinic for immigrant women in the city since 1980, providing services such as breast exams and Pap tests. The nine-metre vehicle has a female doctor and translator on board, and is fitted with waiting and examination rooms.

“Immigrant women typically don’t take care of themselves because they’re so worried about making ends meet, and finding employment,” says Sharisa Mohamed, a counsellor with the centre. “Many of these women are also refugees coming from really bad situations, and their health isn’t the first thing on their mind.”

Many immigrant women are also often struggling to hold down two or three jobs to help support their families, Mohamed adds.

That leaves them no time to visit a walk-in clinic or hospital, made even more difficult by the language barrier and inability to afford a babysitter to look after their kids.

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To address these roadblocks, the mobile health clinic is designed to go to the women, be it at a community centre, mosque, even the car park of a local supermarket.

“Pap smear in a parking lot,” Anna Cioffi, the mobile unit’s coordinator, says jokingly. “It sounds like the title of a punk song.” But seriously, she adds, the clinic has saved countless lives in its 30-year history.

She cited the case of a woman who was being treated for two years for a rash on her genitals, but without her doctor having examined her.

“She came to our clinic and wanted to see one of our doctors,” says Cioffi. “The woman was diagnosed with labia cancer.”

The mobile unit usually conducts two trips a week to Toronto’s outer suburbs, where the city’s immigrant communities tend to be concentrated and medical care in their own language is scarcer.

Every day, about 15 women are seen by the unit’s doctor. A female translator is always on hand to translate from English to Cantonese, Farsi, Hindi, Italian, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, Spanish, Urdu or Vietnamese.

For Jin Sook Park, it was her first time going to a medical clinic since coming to Canada more than 10 years ago. Doctors in Canada recommend women typically come in for Pap smears at least every three years.

“It is more comfortable for me coming to the clinic,” the 42-year-old says in broken English. “I can get medical advice and counselling at the same time.”

Many of the women treated in the clinic lack insurance, including recent immigrants waiting the mandatory three months to qualify for OHIP. During that period they have access only to the most rudimentary of health services, and many can’t afford antibiotics or prescriptions.

The mobile unit also bridges that gap.

During one of the few breaks in the mobile’s long clinic days, Mohamed says that, ultimately, it is a privilege to work with these immigrant women.

“Many of them are coming from countries where they’ve been victimized, tortured, mutilated — where they don’t even let people touch them, let alone be invasive and go inside them,” she says.

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